Bernardo's House

by James Patrick Kelly

  Which was one of Bernardo's favorite fairy tales. Mostly he liked his fiction to be about history. Sailors and cowboys and kings. War and politics. He had no use for mysteries or love stories or science fiction. But every so often he would have her read a fairy tale and then he would try to explain it. He said fairy tales could have many meanings, but she usually just got the one. She remembered that the time she had read Briar Rose to him, he was working at his desk, the only intelligent system inside the house that she couldn't access. He was working in the dark and the desk screen cast milky shadows across his face. She was pretty sure he wasn't listening to her. She wanted to spy over his shoulder with one of her rover cams to see what was so interesting.

  “And, in the very moment when she felt the prick,” she read, “she fell down upon the bed that stood there, and lay in a deep sleep."

  Bernardo chuckled.

  Must be something he saw on the desk, she thought. Nothing funny about Briar Rose. “And this sleep extended over the whole palace; the King and Queen who had just come home, and had entered the great hall, began to go to sleep, and the whole of the court with them. The horses, too, went to sleep in the stable, the dogs in the yard, the pigeons upon the roof, the flies on the wall; even the fire that was flaming on the hearth became quiet and slept. And the wind fell, and on the trees before the castle not a leaf moved again. But round about the castle there began to grow a hedge of thorns, which every year became higher, and at last grew close up round the castle and all over it, so that there was nothing of it to be seen, not even the flag upon the roof."

  “Pay attention,” said Bernardo.

  “Me?” said the house.

  “You.” Bernardo tapped the desk screen and it went dark. She brought the study lights up.

  “That will happen one of these days,” he said.

  “What?"

  “I'll be gone and you'll fall fast asleep."

  “Don't say things like that, Bernardo."

  He crooked a finger and she slid her body next to him.

  “You're hopeless,” he said. “That's what I love about you.” He leaned into her kiss.

  “And then the marriage of the King's son with Briar-rose was celebrated with all splendor,” the house read, “and they lived contented to the end of their days."

  “Heard it different,” said Fly “With nother name, not Briar Rose.” She yawned and stretched. “Heard it Betty."

  “Betty Rose?"

  “Plain Betty."

  The house was eager to please. “Would you like another? Or we could see an opera. I have over six hundred interactive games that you don't need to suit up for. Poetry? The Smithsonian? Superbowls I-LXXVIII?"

  “No more jabber. Boring now.” Fly peeled herself from the warm embrace of the Kukuru chair and stretched. “Still hiding somewhere."

  “I don't know what you're talking about."

  Fly caught the house's body by the arm and dragged her through herself, calling out the names of her rooms. “Play. Living. Dining. Kitchen. Study. Gym. Bed. Nother bed. Plants.” Fly spun Louise in the front hall and pointed. “Door?"

  “Right.” The house was out of breath. “Door. You've seen all there is to see."

  “One door?” The girl's smile was as agreeable as a fist. “Fly buzzy with food now, but not stupid. Where you keep stuff? Heat? Electric? Water?"

  “You want to see that?"

  Fly let go of Louise's arm. “Dink yeah."

  The house didn't much care for her basement and she never went down unless she had to. It was ugly. Three harsh rows of ceiling lights, a couple of bilious green pumps, the squat power plant and the circuit breakers and all that multiconductor cable! She didn't like listening to her freezer hum or smelling the naked cement walls or looking at the scars where the forms had been stripped away after her foundation had been poured.

  “Bernardo?” Fly's voice echoed across the expanse of the basement. “Cut that weewaw, Bernardo."

  “Believe me, there's nothing here.” The house waited on the stairs as the girl poked around. “Please don't touch any switches,” she called.

  “Where that go?” Fly pointed at the heavy duty, ribbed, sectional overhead door.

  “A tunnel,” said the house, embarrassed by the rawness of her 16 gauge steel. “It comes out farther down the mountain near the road. At the end there's another door that's been shotcreted to look like stone."

  “What scaring Bernardo?"

  Bernardo scared? The thought had never even occurred to the house. Bernardo was not the kind of man who would be scared of anything. All he wanted was privacy so he could be alone with her. “I don't know,” she said.

  Fly was moving boxes stacked against the wall near the door. Several contained bolts of spuncloth for the clothes processor, others were filled with spare lights, fertilizer, flour, sugar, oil, raw vitabulk, vials of flavor and food coloring. Then she came to the wine, a couple of hundred bottles of vintage Bordeaux and Napa and Maipo River, some thrown haphazardly into old boxes, other stacked near the wall.

  “Bernardo drink most wine,” said Fly.

  Louise was confused by this strange cache but before she could defend Bernardo, Fly found the second door behind two crates of toilet paper.

  “Where that go?"

  The house felt as if the entire mountain were pressing down on her roof. The door had four panels, two long on top and two short on the bottom and looked to be made of oak, although that didn't mean anything. She fought the crushing weight of the stone with all her might. She thought she could hear her bearing walls buckle, her mind crack. She zoomed her cams on the bronze handleset. Someone would need a key to open that door. But there were no keys! And just who would that someone be?

  The house had never seen the door before.

  Fly jiggled the handleset, but the door was locked. “Bernardo.” She put her face to the door and called. “Hey you."

  The house ran a check of her architectural drawings, although she knew what she would find. The girl turned to her and waved the house over. “Louise, how you open this weewaw?"

  Her plans showed no door.

  The girl rapped on the door.

  The house's thoughts turned to stone.

  When she woke up, her body was on her Epping couch. The jacquard kimono was open and the spaghetti straps that drew her jumpsuit tight were undone. The house had never woken up before. Oh, she had lost that year, but still she had blurry memories of puttering around the kitchen and vacuuming and lazing in her Kukuru chair reading romances and porn. But this was the first time she had ever been nothing and nowhere since the day Bernardo had turned her on.

  “You okay?” Fly knelt by her and rested a hand lightly on the house's forehead to see if she were running a fever. The house melted under the girl's touch. She reached up and guided Fly's hand slowly down the side of her face to her lips. When Fly did not resist, Louise kissed the girl's fingers.

  “How old are you?” said Louise.

  “Thirteen.” Fly gazed down on her, concern tangling with suspicion.

  “Two years older than I am.” Louise chuckled. “I could be your little sister."

  “You dropped, bin-bam and down.” The girl's voice was thick. “Scared me. Lights go out and nothing work.” Fly pulled her hand back. “Thought maybe you dead. And me locked in."

  “Was I out long?"

  “Dink yeah. Felt like most a day."

  “Sorry. That's never happened before."

  “You said, touch no switch. So door is switch?"

  At the mention of the door, there was no door, look at the door, no door there, the house's vision started to dim and the room grew dark. “I—I..."

  The girl put her hands on the house's shoulder and shook her. “Louise what? Louise."

  The house felt circuit breakers snap. She writhed with the pain and bit down hard on her lip. “No,” she cried and sat up, arms flailing. “Yes.” It came out as a hiss and then she was blinking against the brightness of reali
ty.

  Fly was pointing the pulse gun at Louise but her hand was not steady. She had probably figured out that zapping the house wouldn't help at all. A shut-down meant a lock-down and the girl had already spent one day in the dark. Louise raised a hand to reassure her and tried to cover her own panic with a smile. It was a tight fit. “I'm better now."

  “Better.” Fly tucked the gun away. “Not good?"

  “Not good, no,” said the house. “I don't know what's wrong with me."

  The girl paced around the couch. “Listen,” she said finally. “Front door, front. Door I came in, okay? Open that weewaw."

  The house nodded. “I can do that.” She felt stuffy and turned her air recirculators up. “But I can't leave it open. I'm not allowed. So if you want to go, maybe you should go now."

  “Go? Go where?” The girl laughed bitterly. “Here is buzzy. World is spang."

  “Then you should stay. I very much want you to stay. I'll feed you, tell you stories. You can take a bath and play in the gym and watch vids and I can make you new clothes, whatever you want. I need someone to take care of. It's what I was made for.” As Louise got off the couch, the living room seemed to tilt but then immediately righted itself. The lights in the gym and the study clicked back on. “There are just some things that we can't talk about."

  Days went by.

  Then weeks.

  Soon it was months.

  After bouncing off each other at first, the house and the girl settled into a routine of eating and sleeping and playing the hours away—mostly together. Louise could not decide what about Fly pleased her the most. Certainly she enjoyed cooking for the girl, who ate an amazing amount for someone her size. Bernardo was a picky eater. At his age, he had to watch his diet and there were some things he would never have touched, even before the heart attack, like cheese and fish and garlic. After a month of devouring three meals and two snacks a day, the girl was filling out nicely. The chickens were gone, but Fly loved synthetics. Louise could no longer count the girl's ribs. And she thought the girl's breasts were starting to swell.

  Louise had only visited the gym to dust before the girl arrived. Now the two of them took turns on the climbing wall and the gyro and the trampoline, laughing and urging each other to try new tricks. Fly couldn't swim so she never used the lap pool but she loved the jacuzzi. The first few times she had dunked with all her clothes on. Finally Louise hit upon a strategy to coax her into a demure bandeau bathing suit. She imported pictures of hippos from her archive to the clothes processor to decorate the suit. After that, all the pajamas and panties and bathing suits that Fly fabricated had hippo motifs.

  The house was tickled by the way Fly became a clothes processor convert. At first she flipped through the house's wardrobe menus without much interest. The jumpsuits were all too tight and she had no patience whatsoever for skirts or dresses. The rest of it was either too stretchy, too skimpy, too short or too thin. “Good for weewaw,” she said, preferring to wear the ratty shirt and pants and jacket that she had arrived in. But Fly was thrilled with the shoes. She never seemed to tire of designing sandals and slingbacks and mules and flats and jammers. She was particularly proud of her Cuthbertsons, a half boot with an oblique toe and a narrow last. She made herself pairs in aqua and mauve and faux snakeskin.

  It was while Fly was exploring shoe menus that she clicked from a page of women's loafers to a page of men's, and so stumbled upon Bernardo's clothing menus. Louise heard a cackle of delight and hurried to the bedroom to see what was happening. Fly was dancing in front of the screen. “Really real pants,” she said, pointing. “Real pants don't fall open bin-bin-bam.” She started wearing jeans and digbys and fleece and sweatshirts with hoods and pullovers. One day she emerged from the bedroom in an olive-check silk sportcoat and matching driving cap. Seeing Fly in men's clothes made the house feel self-conscious about her own wardrobe of sexware. Soon she too was choosing patterns from Bernardo's menus. The feel of a chamois shirt against her skin reminded the house of her lost love. Once, in a guilty moment, she wondered what he might think if he walked in on them. But then Fly asked Louise to read her a story and she put Bernardo out of mind.

  Although they spent many hours sampling vids together, Louise was happiest reading to Fly. They would curl up together in the Kukuru and the girl would turn the pages as the house read. Of course, they started with hippos: Hugo the Hippo and Hungo the Hippo and The Hippo Had Hiccups. Then There's a Hippopotamus Under My Bed and Hip, Hippo, Hooray and all of the Peter Potamus series. Sometimes Fly would play with Louise's hair while she read, braiding and unbraiding it, or else she would absently press Louise's fingernails like they were keys on a keyboard. One night, just two months after she'd come to the house, the girl fell asleep while the house was reading her Chocolate Chippo Hippo. It was as close to orgasm as the house had been since she had been with Bernardo. She was tempted to kiss the girl but settled for spending the night with her arms around her. The hours ticked slowly as the house gazed down at Fly's peaceful face. She watched the girl's eyes move beneath her lids as she dreamed.

  The house wished she could sleep.

  If only she could dream.

  What was it like to be real?

  Bernardo was never himself again after the heart attack. Of course, he said he was fine. Fine. He probably wouldn't even have told her except for the sternotomy scar, an angry purple-red pucker on his chest. When he first came back to her, five weeks after his triple bypass operation, she could tell he was struggling. It was partly the sex. Normally he would have taken her to bed for the entire first day. Although he kissed her neck and caressed her breasts and told her he loved her, it was almost a week before she coaxed him into sex. She was wild to have his penis in her vagina, to taste his ejaculation; that was how he'd had her designed. But their lovemaking wasn't the same. Sometimes his breath caught during foreplay, as if someone were sitting on him. So she did most of the squirming and licking and sucking. Not that she minded. He watched her—mouth set, toes curled. He could stay just as erect as before, but she knew he was taking pills for that. Once when she was guiding him into her, he gave a little grunt of pain.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  He gave no answer but instead pushed deep all at once; she shivered with delight. But as he thrust at her, she realized that he was working, not playing. They weren't sharing pleasure; he was giving it and she was taking it. Afterwards, he fell asleep almost immediately. No kisses, no cuddles. No stories. The house was left alone with her thoughts. Bernardo had changed, yes. He could change, and she must always be the same. That was the difference between being a real person and being a house.

  He spent more time in the greenhouse than in bed, rearranging his bromeliads. His favorites were the tank types, the Neoregelias with their gaudy leaves and the Aechmeas with their alien inflorescences. He liked to pot them in tableaus: Washington Crossing The Delaware, The Last Supper. Bernardo preferred to be alone with his plants, and she pretended to honor his wish, although her rover cam lurked behind the Schefflera. So she saw him slump against the potting bench on that last day. She thought he was having another attack.

  “Bernardo!” she cried over the room speaker as she sent her body careening toward the greenhouse. “My god, Bernardo. What is it?"

  When she got to him, she could see that his shoulders were shaking. She leaned him back. His eyes were shiny. “Bernardo?” She touched a tear that ran down his face.

  “When I had you built,” he said, “all I wanted was to be the person who deserved to live here. But I'm not anymore. Maybe I never was.” His eyelid drooped and the corner of his mouth curved in an odd frown.

  “Louise, wake up!” Someone was shaking her.

  The house opened her eyes and powered up all her cams at once. “What?” The first thing she saw was Fly staring up at her, clearly worried.

  “You sleeptalking.” The girl took the house's hand in both of hers. “Saying ‘Bernardo, Bernardo.’ Real sad."
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  “I don't sleep."

  “Spang you don't. What you just doing?"

  “I ... I was thinking."

  “About him?"

  “Let's have breakfast."

  “What happened to him?” said Fly. “Where is Bernardo?"

  The house had to change the topic somehow. In desperation she filled the room with bread scent and put on the Wagner's Prelude to Die Meistersinger. It was sort of a march. Actually, more a processional. Anyway, they needed to move. Or she did. La-lum-la-la, li-li-li-li-la-la-lum-la.

  Let's talk about you, Fly.

  No, really.

  But why not?

  At first, Fly had refused to say anything about her past, but she couldn't help but let bits of the story slip. As time passed and she felt more secure, she would submit to an occasional question. The house was patient and never pressed the girl to say more than she wanted. So it took time for the house to piece together Fly's story.

  Sometime around 2038, as near as the house could tell, a computer virus choked off the infofeed for almost a month. The virus apparently repurposed much of the Midwest's computing resources to perform a single task. Fly remembered a time when every screen she saw was locked on its message: Bang, you're dead. Speakers blared it, phones rasped it, thinkmates whispered it into earstones. Bang, you're dead. Fly was still living in the brown house with white shutters in Sarcoxie with her mother, whose name was Nikki, and her father, Jerry, who had a tattoo of a hippo on each arm. Her father had worked as a mechanic for Sarcoxie RentalCars ‘N More. But although the screens came back on, Sarcoxie RentalCars ‘N More never reopened. Her father said that there was no work anywhere in the Ozarks. They lived in the brown house for awhile but then there was no food so they had to leave. She remembered that they got on a school bus and lived in a big building where people slept on the floor and there were always lines for food and the bathrooms smelled a bad kind of sweet and then they sent her family to tents in the country. They must have been staying near a farm because she remembered chickens and sometimes they had scrambled eggs for dinner but then there was a fire and people were shooting bullets and she got separated from her parents and nobody would tell her where they were and then she was with Kuniko, an old woman who lived in a dead Dodge Caravan and next to it was another car she had filled with cans of fried onions and chow mein and creamed corn and Kuniko was the one who told her the fairy tales but that winter it got very cold and Kuniko died and Happy Man took her away. He did things to her she was never going to talk about although he did give her good stuff to eat. Happy Man said people were working again and the infofeed had grown much wider and things were getting back to normal. Fly thought that meant her father would come to rescue her but finally she couldn't wait any more so she zapped Happy Man with his pulse gun and took some of his stuff and ran and ran and ran until Louise had let her in.